Rights Clearance: Happy Birthday can be expensive.

The Center for Social Media has a great article on the difficulties of "Rights Clearance" the film makers have in trying to get their movies distributed when they've incorporated content that may fall outside of Fair Use, and even if it does, legal difficulties can still arise.  It's shocking to think that creating a film and having the cast sing one verse of "Happy Birthday" can cost up to $20,000 dollars.

I find it absurd that on one hand, companies are willing to pay to have their product featured on a show, or give them product for that matter and on the other hand, you have to pay a copyright holder for having a TV in the background that has a minor shot of a Simpson's TV episode on it.  This is particularly troublesome to documentarians who might be filming an inside interview of someone at WalMart and because the background store music is playing a copyrighted song, they have to pay a hefty fee, or worse, can't even obtain the rights clearance.

I would think that most copyright owners would want the use of their material  as "Fair Use" clips as it promotes their work , assuming that their work is shown in a good light.  Having a scene in a movie where you have a serial killer watching the Wiggles might not make the best association.